Vehicle Examination and Road Safety
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6503800814 |
| Date | 01 August 1965 |
| Published date | 01 August 1965 |
| Author | Kenneth Sloan |
| Subject Matter | Article |
CONSTABLE
KENNETH
SLOAN
Stockport Borough Police
VEmULE
EXAMINATION
AND
ROAD
SAFETY
Accident statistics make terrifying reading, and one way in which
the police can help to reduce the casualty figures is by ensuring that
all motor vehicles are in a roadworthy condition. There are no
figures showing the relationship of vehicle defects to road accidents,
but
there is no doubt that they play quite a large part.
We all know of collisions that would never have occurred if the
vehicle's steering had been more responsive, or its brakes more
efficient. Parked cars sometimes run away downhill because of
faulty handbrakes. Occasionally even wheels fall off vehicles and
trailers come adrift. Accidents may also be caused by a driver's
vision being restricted by inefficient windscreen wipers, tyres blowing
out, and defective lighting. Motorists have died by being overcome
by exhaust fumes leaking into their cars. All accidents of this type
are avoidable because they are partially due to faults which should
have been detected and rectified before the vehicle was taken on the
road.
There is plenty of scope for the detection of these offences. Out of
atotal of 9,149,704 vehicles examined under the vehicle testing
scheme up to the end of 1963,test certificates were initially refused in
2,734,860 cases. These tests only apply to the date of examination
and many testing stations are not all that they should be. In any case
39,740 drivers were reported in 1963, for using vehicleswithout a test
certificate. During the same year, 32,000 prohibition notices were
issued by Ministry of Transport examiners to owners of faulty goods
vehicles.
The Police have been given an important power by s. 67 of the
Road Traffic Act, 1960, which is not used as much as it should be.
This is the power of authorized vehicle examiners to ensure that the
requirements of the law as to brakes, silencers, steering gears, tyres,
lighting equipment and reflectors, are complied with. Motor vehicles
may be tested on a road at any time and may be driven by the exami-
ner for this purpose. The driver
may
elect that the test shall be
deferred to another time and place, but
not
if the vehicle has been
involved in an accident or is apparently so defective that it ought not
to be allowed to proceed without being tested. In most cases it will
be more convenient for the examination to take place at a police
garage and this should be suggested to the driver.
It
will usually be
found that he will also prefer to do this.
August 1965 390
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